Yeah, there's not much out there. And when you see one you'd like to go after, you know you are 1/400 or 1/1400 (which was the case for one of the jobs I went after) which makes it that much harder to stand out.

Every time I hear things like Oracle will lay off 35,000 from Sun and things like that, it just makes my stomach clench.

But, I figure, keep at it, and eventually we have to get somewhere, right?

The Brits want a visa I can't afford. The people I got the job from don't want to pay for it. The visa costs more than I'd make in a summer. Blech.

I've only found one job I'd actually want to do in all my weeks / months of searching. Am in the running, but now am waiting for the actual decision to be made.

i was feeling confident until after the second interview. Now I'm positive I won't get it. I am filled with an impending sense of dooooom.

Everything I said in the last interview - though it seemed fine at the time - is sure to have been the wrong thing. Also I'm convinced my old boss will give me a bad reference.

And the fucked up thing is, I was pretty sure that I was almost a shoo in for the role - having applied originally for a different position at the same company and been INVITED to apply for that role too.

I'll find out before wednesday next week. In the mean time, I'm a mess. Can't think about anything else - certainly can't continue to apply for any other roles, or organise those last few documents for my unemployment benefits. So I'm getting annoyed with myself for being so slack, so disorganised, so wasteful. And yet I don't have the mental capacity or energy to apply for anything.

I am fortunate in that I have a pension from my first career to fall back on while I'm looking. I'm 56 years old and would like to work another 8-10 years, but I'm somewhat content for now to let the folks with no income have what few available jobs there are. When things turn around (in 9-12 months, two years, who knows?), then I will aggressively get back into the job market. For now, I'm cool, and chill.

I was supposed to hear back about a job I had two phone interviews for and traveled out there for a three hour interview with six different people. I was supposed to hear Wednesday. They haven't called my references. Not looking good, but I can't figure out what I screwed up. The interviews all went really well.

I am kind of in a good place now with this - the time I have available for now is being put to incredibly good use, although I'm slowly going dustbowl broke in the process. To wit:

- I've been on seven different radio programs at WSCA during our pledge week as a pledge partner.

- I just finished Opening Night for Jeffery and even got laughs on some of my lines. The entire run is benefitting Seacoast Outright, which is a non-profit that benefits the LGBT Youth around these parts, and which is also going belly-up because of the new economy. So every ticket sold means some kid in my zip code is getting the counseling and personal care they need to move through the coming-out process.

- The SEIU Local used my signage for a protest last week, and I got five pages of signatures for the petition I circulated at our Save The Bridges rally this past Tuesday.

So even though my ass is dead broke and there's nothing happening job-wise, at least I'm giving something back to the community and building a mentor network of people I want to know in town.

I've been pretty seriously stressed about it. I'm really into my career these days and am just so frustrated that it's taking this left turn when I did.not.want. And since my entire sector is shrinking, there's not much out there. Lots and lots of half-time, part-time, soft-money, short-term gigs.

I've been on three interviews and have a couple applications in for good searches. I'll be talking to an arts high school next week about maybe teaching for a while - not that it's my dream, but I flat out just need a job. Also starting to reluctantly think about relocating. There are some museum and public history jobs popping up here and there...just not in my neck of the woods too much, and I'm so invested in the community here that I really don't want to leave just now.

The good news is we scraped around and identified some money to apply to my salary, so my present emplyment is extended while I continue searching. And I've applied for recovery funds under the NEA disbursement, which could help me finish out the year if nothing, nothing turns up.

But every day's stressful. Though I'm still working and thankful for that much, the total reorganization has everything all asses and elbows, so nobody's happy or comfortable. There's a very much "grit your teeth and get through it" feeling out there.

As for the news? I've stopped listening to NPR. For a huge news junkie and NPR lover like me, that's saying something. But I had the same stomach-clenching problem and started to feel a little panicky every time there was another layoff story or quarterly report story or Fed prognosis story. I'm intentionally narrowing my focus so I can stop freaking out a little. All I need is one good job.

I'm barely looking now, I admit it. I've applied to about fifty jobs, had maybe three interviews total. And there aren't really new jobs posted every day anyways. Sometimes only two or three a week that I would be able to do, meet the criteria for, and fall within my acceptable range of pay (IE I won't take a job that pays less than I make on unemployment, which itself was a big cut from my former salary).

It sucks. I was great at IT sales, but the few IT sales postings out there are being applied to by me, the other 100 people my company laid off with me, the 100s others that our competition laid off, etc. And a lot of those people have decades of experience to my few years, or advanced business degrees.

I keep getting these letters from unemployment directing me to jobs that "fit my qualifications" which are utter shit. Telemarketing, collections, stuff I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole and would be a 10K a year pay cut at minimum. Could be worse, though... a friend with a degree in photography and graphic design got one from them saying he should apply for a job SORTING PARTS AT A WAREHOUSE for $8 an hour! He was making close to 40K when he got laid off, $8 an hour would barely pay off his student loans. I really wonder if they randomly send things to people or if they read them first.

I'm just going to go back to school. At this point, I figure I'll end up teaching. Which is cool, and what I wanted to do originally, but figured it would be harder to find work in than library science. NY says it's high demand, though, so they have provisions for people who were laid off and go to school to teach. So the real plus side is it'll keep me from having to hunt for a job for two more years (while keeping my benefits the whole time.)

(Oh, and Miko- NPR is all swine flu all the time right now, so you should be safe until this is over and they're back on the economy)

I had a job interview at my library on Tuesday I am sure I bombed. Three behavioural questions, the first two were almost exactly the same ("Describe a complex reference interview you have done" and "Describe a reference interview that took longer than you thought it should"). Interestingly enough, the job was in acquisitions - not reference. The third question asked me to describe a previous job that required multi-tasking and how I coped with it. I talked about delegating work in a previous position ... and of course realised afterwards the position I was applying for has no one to delegate too. I was also annoyed that the job description they provided me beforehand (and which I used to highlight my relevant skills during the interview) was completely different from the verbal description of the job that gave me at the end. The feeling in the library is they had selected the candidate they wanted and created the job for that person specifically. At least I am better off than the (underqualified) friend that applied for the same job and after leaving the interview room was working on the computer nearby and could here the interview committee say "No, definitely not him". Burn!